Physical description
Portrait, head and shoulders, turned slightly to left and looking to front; the sitter is wearing a necklace of pearls, earrings and a low-cut blue dress. Features in delicate stipple of brown and sanguine, with blue and yellow washed into the shadows and blended with gouache, over a pale carnation ground; hair washed and hatched in browns over a pale brown wash with gouache lights; dress and landscape background washed and hatched in gouache; a marginal strip in gold; on vellum put down on pasteboard, now delaminated.
Frame: Nineteenth-century copper-gilt locket, convex back and straight sides with a central torus moulding, the sides drawn up into a bezel which holds the convex glass; the hanger of cosse de pois type, with a projection at each shoulder and a small bead on top. Engraved on the back with the title in pseudo-seventeenth-century style; compare the variant of this type of case in Cat. No. 35.
Place of Origin
England, Great Britain (painted)
Date
1638-1640 (painted)
Artist/maker
Hoskins, John (I), born 1585 - died 1665 (artist)
Materials and Techniques
Watercolour on vellum put down on pasteboard, now delaminated
Marks and inscriptions
'IH'
'Lady Cath' How[ ard] I daug'r/ to the Earle/of Suffolk'
'Howard'
Dimensions
Height: 84 mm, Width: 67 mm
Object history note
Provenance: Evidently Addington, but not present in his contribution to the South Kensington exhibitions in 1862 or 1865, nor in his sale in 1883; Propert Collection until 1897; FAS, by Salting, and by him bequeathed to the Museum, 1910.
Descriptive line
Portrait miniature of Catherine Howard, Lady d'Aubigny, watercolour on vellum, by John Hoskins, 1638-1640.
Bibliographic References (Citation, Note/Abstract, NAL no)
Murdoch, John. Seventeenth-century English Miniatures in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum. London: The Stationery Office, 1997.
Cat.29, p.62-63. Full Citation:
"29 Catherine Howard, Lady d' Aubigny, and later Lady Newburgh
(d.1650)
1638-40
P105-1910
Oval 84 x 67 mm
Features in delicate stipple of brown and sanguine, with blue and yellow washed into the shadows and blended with gouache, over a pale carnation ground; hair washed and hatched in browns over a pale brown wash with gouache lights; dress and landscape background washed and hatched in gouache; a marginal strip in gold; on vellum put down on pasteboard, now delaminated.
Condition: Very faded in the flesh where the red has virtually disappeared; some scattered small losses, especially in the dress and lower margins.
Signed: Lower centre right, in gold: IH (see E in Appendix 2).
Inscribed on the back of the detached laminate backing card in an old hand, inked in: Lady Cath' How[ ard] I daug'r/ to the Earle/of Suffolk; and by a more recent hand (possibly Addington or Propert) in graphite, expanding the truncated inscription: Howard.
Frame: Nineteenth-century copper-gilt locket, convex back and straight sides with a central torus moulding, the sides drawn up into a bezel which holds the convex glass; the hanger of cosse de pois type, with a projection at each shoulder and a small bead on top. Engraved on the back with the title in pseudo-seventeenth-century style; compare the variant of this type of case in Cat. No. 35 [P.104-1910].
Provenance: Evidently Addington, but not present in his contribution to the South Kensington exhibitions in 1862 or 1865, nor in his sale in 1883; Propert Collection until 1897; FAS, by Salting, and by him bequeathed to the Museum, 1910.
Exhibited: BFAC 1889, p. 102, no. 61, pl. ix; FAS 1897, no. 60 (as 'from Addington Collection') .
Literature: Propert 1887, repro. facing p. 77; Salting Collection, 1911. p.46; Foster 1914-16, vol. II, p. 135, no. III ('in a blue dress and small black cap'); Long 1929, p. 224; Long 1930, p. 37; Summary Catalogue, 1981, p.31; Murdoch 1981, p. 101, pl. 19d (repro. in colour); Reynolds 1982, p. 508.
For the likeness compare Cat. No. 28, but as with all court beauties Lady d'Aubigny's individuality is somewhat submerged in the proliferation of images of her. The miniature is, however, close to the Van Dyck double portrait of her with the Countess of Portland , (1) which is the source of numerous copies and some variants in which the sitter's eyes are turned to face the painter. (2) The miniature may therefore be one of these more or less free adaptations from the figure of Lady d' Aubigny in the double portrait, or Hoskins may have had a sitting to himself: the Van Dyckian pose was already well established in his repertory, and the background, costume, direction and expression of the gaze arguably combine to make this miniature substantially an independent invention. Stylistically it belongs in the sequence of portraits from the life by Hoskins, with the Lady Dorothy Perey (Cat. No. 26), the Katherine Bruee (Cat. No. 27), and the Lady d'Aubigny (Cat. No. 28), all apparently of the late 1630s. Under ultraviolet light the backgrounds fluoresce in a strikingly similar way, and it is probable that work in this bright polychrome stipple, as distinct from that in direct brown and sanguine hatch, represents the output of the elder Hoskins during the early years of the Civil War.
The hand in the old inscription may be that of Hoskins himself or of a studio assistant. Compare the inscriptions on miniatures by Cooper, Gibson, Snelling, Cross et al., for the practice of inscribing the sitter's name on the back of the vellum before cutting it to the oval.
1 Hermitage, Leningrad; Glück 1931, pl. 499.
2 E.g.Windsor; Millar 1963, no. 177; and in the miniature format Cat. No. 35."
Exhibition History
Historical Collection of Miniatures formed by Mr J Lumsden Propert (Fine Art Society 01/01/1897-31/12/1897)
Exhibition of Portrait Miniatures (Burlington Fine Arts Club 1889-1889)
Materials
Watercolour; Vellum
Techniques
Painting
Subjects depicted
Woman; Pearls; Stuart, Catherine (Lady Aubigny)
Categories
Portraits; Paintings
Collection code
PDP
